Zada 'Was Not on the Radar': How Sunrise on the Reaping Found Its Haymitch
Joseph Zada was not on the Sunrise on the Reaping team’s radar until casting director Debra Zane put him in front of them, and director Francis Lawrence says they then “really put him through the wringer” before handing the Sydney actor the role of Haymitch Abernathy.
That is the headline detail from a USA Today interview with Lawrence and producer Nina Jacobson, published on Thursday (US time) to coincide with Lionsgate’s drop of 14 character posters across its social channels. KiMi Robinson’s piece goes actor by actor through the principal cast, and for Australian readers the Zada passage is the one to read twice.
The local kid who had to earn it
Zada is 21, and plays Haymitch at 16. Lawrence tells USA Today there was “a lot that was expected” of whoever took the role, given Woody Harrelson’s four-film run, and that the easy, wrong answer would have been “an impersonation”.
Instead he wanted the origin version. “Part of the story is the origin story, right?” he says, describing the Haymitch he was after as having “youth and optimism, some mischief and some irreverence”. That is a precise read of the book, where the boy on the Reaping-day birthday walk with Lenore Dove is a long way from the man Katniss meets on the train.
Zane also pushed Kelvin Harrison Jr. for Beetee, which Lawrence credits in the same breath; he says Harrison found a way to “infuse his performance with Jeffrey”, meaning Jeffrey Wright’s original. So the same casting director delivered both the Australian lead and the film’s most direct link back to the Mockingjay-era cast.
Plemons first, then the dominoes
The first name locked was Jesse Plemons as the young Plutarch Heavensbee. Lawrence calls him “visually a great younger Plutarch”, and says Plemons’ standing among actors “would also help attract other cast members”. Jacobson’s summary of what followed: “You kind of can’t believe it when they say yes to you.”
Ralph Fiennes was “our dream” for Snow, according to Jacobson, and drew on Shakespeare’s Coriolanus to build the president. Lawrence’s one instruction to him doubled as the rule for everyone stepping into an established role: “Don’t make yourself sound like Donald Sutherland.” His broader note to the cast was “I want you to find your own voice.”
Kieran Culkin was “at the top of our list” for Caesar Flickerman, and Jacobson says he brought “the humor and mischief that Stanley Tucci brought”. Elle Fanning, Lawrence says, has “the kind of effervescence and a youthful vitality” the student-stylist Effie of this era needs.
Glenn Close cast herself, more or less. Jacobson describes “a very unexpected email” from Close asking to be part of the film; she now plays District 12 escort Drusilla Sickle, with Billy Porter as her stylist husband Magno Stift. Lawrence says of Porter’s role that “there’s a lot less on the page than there is in the movie”, which book readers will take as a promise.
The District 12 corner
The Australian-adjacent news extends to Zada’s screen partner. On Whitney Peak’s Lenore Dove, Jacobson offers the line of the interview: “There’s no Katniss without Lenore Dove.” Anyone who has traced the Covey thread from Ballad through to the meadow song will know exactly what she means.
Mckenna Grace won Maysilee Donner off a self-tape Lawrence calls “fantastic”; he describes the character as “fiery and feisty” with “real opinions”, which is the Maysilee who walks into the arena with a blowgun and a grudge. Ben Wang’s Wyatt Callow, the odds-calculating tribute, apparently improvised some of his best lines, and Percy Daggs IV’s Ampert is described by Jacobson as one of the “puzzle pieces” without which Katniss’s rebellion “wouldn’t ever have happened”.
Maya Hawke (Wiress) and Lili Taylor (Mags) round out the mentor bench. Lawrence singles out Mags as “such a warm, extremely empathetic, likable character in the series”, and anyone who remembers Lynn Cohen’s Mags in Catching Fire will understand why that casting mattered to him.
The AU read
The piece confirms what the Sydney fan event on Wednesday night already showed: Lionsgate is running this campaign on Zada’s shoulders, and the “unknown found by Debra Zane” story is now the official version of how he got here. Expect to hear it on every stop from London onwards.
The character posters themselves landed overnight into Thursday AEDT. We’ll have the full set with the Roadshow versions once the local art is through.
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is directed by Francis Lawrence and stars Joseph Zada, Whitney Peak, Mckenna Grace, Elle Fanning, Jesse Plemons and Ralph Fiennes, with Glenn Close, Kieran Culkin, Maya Hawke, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Ben Wang, Billy Porter, Lili Taylor and Percy Daggs IV. It opens in Australian cinemas 19 November 2026, a day ahead of the US.
Sources: USA Today — How ‘Sunrise on the Reaping’ landed its ‘dream’ cast (KiMi Robinson, 15 Oct 2026) · Lionsgate character posters, 15 Oct 2026 (via Trevor Decker News)
